Catalyst 10.6 released

[zebrax2]

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

GPU acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe® Flash
Player 10.1

z AMD GPU acceleration of Adobe® Flash Player 10.1 delivers smooth high
definition video playback and reduces system resource utilization
z Adobe Flash Player 10.1 can be accelerated on notebook and desktop platforms
featuring AMD graphics including:
ƒ ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series
ƒ ATI Mobility ATI Radeon™ HD 400 series (and higher)
ƒ ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 series integrated graphics (and higher)

Video De-blocking support

z Reduces blocking artifacts seen in low-bit rate video during playback
z Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of products

Mosquito noise reduction

z Reduces mosquito noise seen in highly compressed progressive video, during
playback
z Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series of products

Official support for OpenGL 4.0 and OpenGL 3.3

z ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 4.0 on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series
z ATI Catalyst 10.6 delivers official support for OpenGL 3.3 on the ATI Radeon™ HD Series

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst™ 10.6:

z 3DMark Vantage
ƒ Overall scores improve up to 5% on a single ATI Radeon™ HD 5970

z Batman: Arkham Asylum
ƒ Performance improves up to 5% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 10% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5970
configurations

z Aliens vs. Predator DirectX® 11 Benchmark
ƒ Performance improves up to 4% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 10% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5970
configurations
ƒ Performance improves up to 3% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5700
Series products

z Company of Heroes – DX10
ƒ Performance improves up to 7% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 5% with single card and CrossFire™ ATI
Radeon™ HD 5970 configurations

z Crysis Warhead
ƒ CrossFire™ performance improves by up to 7% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5000
Series products

z DiRT 2 – DX9
ƒ Performance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 10% on single card ATI Radeon™ HD 5970
configurations
ƒ Performance improves up to 4% on single card ATI Radeon™ HD 5700
Series products

z The Chronicles of Riddick - Assault on Dark Athena
ƒ Performance improves up to 15% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 13% on CrossFire™ and single card ATI
Radeon™ HD 5970 configurations
ƒ Performance improves up to 8% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5700
Series products

z Unigine Tropics
ƒ CrossFire™ performance improves by up to 8% on ATI Radeon™ HD 500
Series products

z World in Conflict
ƒ Performance improves up to 6% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 8% on CrossFire™ and single card ATI
Radeon™ HD 5970 configurations

z Wolfenstein
ƒ Performance improves up to 18% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5800
Series products
ƒ Performance improves up to 18% on CrossFire™ and single card ATI
Radeon™ HD 5970 configurations
ƒ Performance improves up to 11% on CrossFire™ ATI Radeon™ HD 5700
Series products

 

[faxon]

Nice looks like they tweaked OGL performance a lot with this release, good to see with rage coming soonish

 

[Skurge]

Nice crossfire gains, about flash 10.1, does it work with every video on youtube for example?

 

[Bateluer]

Dang, I never did install 10.5, the 4870s aren't getting much love with these new driver releases.

 

[Unkle_Tar]

Nice crossfire gains, about flash 10.1, does it work with every video on youtube for example?

Works on my laptop(ATI 4200), 1080p videos cpu useage goes from about 80-90% down to 30-40%.

 

[djnsmith7]

The numbers, as an average, are low, but there are several that stick out, 15% & a couple of 18%'s. The larger numbers are good & hopefully we'll consistently see these increase over time.

I'd like to see a 1.9x separation between single card & dual cards like we're seeing with the GTX 480's new drivers. Now that would be awesome. It looks like ATI's coming around.

 

[ultimahwhat]

Still having the high idle clock issues with overdrive enabled (400/whatever value memory is set to.).

HD5750, Catalyst 10.6 in Windows 7 Pro x64. Single card with single display.

Anyone still having the same problems?

 

[Scali]

Nice crossfire gains, about flash 10.1, does it work with every video on youtube for example?

It should yes.
The added H264 support in Flash 10.1 is for the 720 and 1080 videos.
The others already had hardware acceleration.
So now it should work for every video.

 

[thescreensavers]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XITHbsUUlYI

on 10.5 with my 3650 CPU is avraging 75%
10.6

Yea GPU is not doing anything when playing video's I also reinstalled flash.

 

[Lonbjerg]

*start countdown to the first 10.6 hotfix*

10...9...8...7...

 

[Qbah]

Still having the high idle clock issues with overdrive enabled (400/whatever value memory is set to.).

HD5750, Catalyst 10.6 in Windows 7 Pro x64. Single card with single display.

Anyone still having the same problems?

Unfortunately, this is not a bug. Both nVidia and AMD clock their cards up when two or more screens are connected to the card "due to stability reasons".

Installed 10.6 and it's fine.

/offtopic
Love my new Toxic HD5850 btw The card is dead silent Even with 2 screens I can't hear the fan (got low RPM Nexus at 5V in my case) Card is running at 400/1125 at idle, 50C, fan speed at 31%.

 

[nemesismk2]

The 10.6 hotfix for Windows XP is working great for my 3850 which uses AGP

 

[Sylvanas]

I note the conspicuous absence of Happymedium after saying AMD had 'shot their load' with 10.3. Obviously not the case. Good to see some good video playback improvements.

 

[dug777]

Unfortunately, this is not a bug. Both nVidia and AMD clock their cards up when two or more screens are connected to the card "due to stability reasons".

Installed 10.6 and it's fine.

/offtopic
Love my new Toxic HD5850 btw The card is dead silent Even with 2 screens I can't hear the fan (got low RPM Nexus at 5V in my case) Card is running at 400/1125 at idle, 50C, fan speed at 31%.

downloading now

/offtopic

Congrats mate, welcome to the extremely contented 5850 owners' club, have you tried a spot of overclocking yet?

 

[ultimahwhat]

Unfortunately, this is not a bug. Both nVidia and AMD clock their cards up when two or more screens are connected to the card "due to stability reasons".

Installed 10.6 and it's fine.

/offtopic
Love my new Toxic HD5850 btw The card is dead silent Even with 2 screens I can't hear the fan (got low RPM Nexus at 5V in my case) Card is running at 400/1125 at idle, 50C, fan speed at 31%.

I know about the two screen stability issue, which is why I mentioned that I had only one screen connected. Maybe it was wishful thinking for 10.6 to be able to detect the presence of a only single display (that was working fine at downclocked memory before 10.4)

 

[Qbah]

I know about the two screen stability issue, which is why I mentioned that I had only one screen connected. Maybe it was wishful thinking for 10.6 to be able to detect the presence of a only single display (that was working fine at downclocked memory before 10.4)

I read something about the card being stuck in UVD mode. No other details though, you will have to google around. But from what I remember it was actually something else keeping the card in UVD mode and not the driver's fault.

Congrats mate, welcome to the extremely contented 5850 owners' club, have you tried a spot of overclocking yet?

Nope, not yet. Just fooling around for now. I'm planning to though However I already encountered several issues... The first 4 games I tried, 2 didn't work at all, one was very unstable. Had to google around for the fixes but now it's fine. That's the part I don't enjoy...

 

[happy medium]

I note the conspicuous absence of Happymedium after saying AMD had 'shot their load' with 10.3. Obviously not the case. Good to see some good video playback improvements.

Lots of crossfire love,but wheres the single card love? Sorry missed the crysis warhead up to 7%.

Who cares about Dirt 2 with Direct x 9 improvments. I bought a direct x 11 card .

Allmost no love at all for single 57xx series?

But it is good news for us guys like me that are ready to crossfire there 5700 cards. Well not really, the games they chose to improve run just fine with my single card.

Mabe next time..........

 

[Kenmitch]

Lots of crossfire love,but wheres the single card love? Sorry missed the crysis warhead up to 7%.

Who cares about Dirt 2 with Direct x 9 improvments. I bought a direct x 11 card .

Allmost no love at all for single 57xx series?

But it is good news for us guys like me that are ready to crossfire there 5700 cards. Well not really, the games they chose to improve run just fine with my single card.

Mabe next time..........

Just because only those games or features are mentioned it doesn't mean performance won't be gained in other games or areas....Guess one would just have to give the new drivers a shot and see for themselves.

I haven't tried them yet to see....Still debating on when I'm gonna do my case swap. Might give them a shot later today to see how they perform.

 

[Phynaz]

Who cares about Dirt 2 with Direct x 9 improvments.

People that play Dirt 2 care.

 

[mhouck]

People that play Dirt 2 care.

his point was with a 58xx card you should be running in dx11

 

[faxon]

People that play Dirt 2 care.

people that play dirt 2 on HD5x00 hardware play it in DX11 cause their cards can handle it, people with HD4x00 hardware play it in DX10. i doubt there are hardly any users who these drivers effect that play DX9 lol

 

[lavaheadache]

I have a feeling that AMD implemented the 400mhz idle speed to erraticate some of the issues people were having with 2d pixelation as I used to get blue pixels in 2d before. I noticed with 10.5 my problem was solved

 

[busydude]

people that play dirt 2 on HD5x00 hardware play it in DX11 cause their cards can handle it, people with HD4x00 hardware play it in DX10. i doubt there are hardly any users who these drivers effect that play DX9 lol

There is no DX10 mode for DiRT2. It supports either DX9 or DX11.

 

[mv2devnull]

people that play dirt 2 on HD5x00 hardware play it in DX11 cause their cards can handle it, people with HD4x00 hardware play it in DX10. i doubt there are hardly any users who these drivers effect that play DX9 lol

The dirt2 improvements were listed for HD5x00 cards. Therefore, if there is a user out there, who was not satisfied with dirt2 DX11 speed on his HD5970 and only moderately happy with the DX9 speed, ... that user is now a tiny bit happier.

Gosh, I just got the 10.5 installed with a new card. ... continuous updates ... *grumble*:sneaky:

 

[Resonance]

when i viewed that hd video with 10.5 my cpu usage was 75% and then after i installed 10.6 it was still the same, am i doing anything wrong or do i need to check a box in ccc?